


He Bleeds Golden

by bobayugs



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, Hurt, Love, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Sad, Sad Ending, Sick Character, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, i don't wanna give too much away i'm sorry for vague tags, yugyeom is a doctor!! my boy uwu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:55:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25213540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobayugs/pseuds/bobayugs
Summary: “But even a chance at survival is better than knowing for certain that you won’t…” Jinyoung trailed off.“I know,” Jackson said, his voice little. “But I would rather die loving him than forget just how much I did.”[OR the hanahaki!au that I’ve been dying to write]
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Mark Tuan, Mark Tuan/Jackson Wang
Comments: 13
Kudos: 48





	He Bleeds Golden

Jackson had always thought Mark was the most beautiful man in the world. He would often drop by his flower shop on his way home from work just to see him walk through the rows and rows of colourful petals and greenery. The earthy smell had become one of comfort to Jackson, and the last few weeks had found him sitting in one of the back corners of the shop, enjoying the last moments of the store’s opening hours peacefully. He’d bring a paper from the endless pile collecting on his desk at work to read through, listening to the muffled sounds of the traffic outside and watching as the setting sun shone brilliant shades of orange and purple through the large glass windows. Often, he would stay there so long Mark had finished closing before Jackson had even realised.

It was an early evening like that when Jackson first coughed up the petal. There was an itch growing in the back of his throat. It was light and a little dry and he tried clearing his throat softly, hoping to ease it. When the feeling persisted—he noticed it had moved up a bit in his throat—he coughed and felt his airway clear again. Relieved, he pulled his hand away from his mouth, only to find a small yellow petal sitting in the palm of hand. He blinked, unsure whether to believe what he was seeing. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. He glanced around; none of the flowers around him were yellow, and when he looked up hoping to find a similar-looking plant hanging above his head, he found none.

“Jackson! I’m closing up the shop, get ready to go in a few minutes.”

Jackson dropped the petal to the ground and hastily pushed it with the toe of his shoe behind some foliage sweeping the ground nearby. He stood up, brushing any dirt he could find off his pants, and walked to meet Mark over by the back counter.

Mark smiled at Jackson when he saw him before bending down to lock a cupboard under the bench. When he popped up again, Mark flashed Jackson a toothy grin and giggled, jumping up onto the counter and sliding over to the other side, collecting more dirt on his already stained jeans.

“Are you alright?” Mark asked as they walked back through the store, past the rows of small pots and towering green plants. “I heard you coughing back there.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Jackson lied. “Just a bit of dirt that was floating around.”

Mark’s cheeks were flushed, the soft pink colour peeking out between the darker patches of dirt layering on top of his skin.

“Hey, wait a second.” They stopped just outside the door and Jackson reached up to Mark’s face, rubbing at a particularly dark spot gently with his thumb. It was stupid. He shouldn’t have done it. The way Mark looked at him, the way his eyes caught the sun’s dying rays, the softness of his skin beneath Jackson’s palm, it was too much. He was ethereal, and Jackson had never loved anyone more.

Jackson felt another itch crawl up his throat, but he ignored it, swallowing forcefully as he lowered his hand and left it hanging in the air, empty, cold, every nerve on fire.

“What are you reading?” Mark asked as he fiddled with the shop’s front door with a handful of small silver keys that chimed softly in his palm.

Jackson cleared his throat and looked back at his papers, trying to shake the vision of the yellow petal from his mind. “Just some statistics on Switzerland.”

“Ah yes, they’re moving you there soon, aren’t they?” Mark asked.

“Yeah, in four months.”

And that was Jackson’s downfall. He was a Chinese consular, moved from country to country frequently. He’d had the best three years here, meeting Mark sometime in the middle of the second, but now, his time was running out. And that was why he would never, _never_ admit how he felt about Mark. There was no time. Even if his feelings were reciprocated—of which he was doubtful—, it could go nowhere, become nothing worthwhile. It would just hurt him more. And so, Jackson decided to remain quiet, to suffer through his affection, and love from afar. He just hoped that the next four months would take time to reach their end.

❀

The second time the yellow petals made their appearance was in his apartment. Jackson had been scrolling through his phone aimlessly, when he had come across a picture of Mark and a guy he didn’t recognise. They looked happy, arms slung around each other, the staple toothy grin plastered across Mark’s face.

Jackson felt jealousy rise into his throat, barely concealing the familiar itching feeling that rose with it. Before he could make a conscious decision, he coughed, his body expelling the strange blockage on its own. He felt it this time, a fluttering sensation in his throat and the rubbery texture of the petals on his tongue as they passed through his mouth and floated down onto his bed. Three perfect yellow flower petals. They were oval-shaped, though roughly so, with little green tips where the petals came to their sharpest points.

Jackson shook his head; he had no idea what was going on. And yet, it was unmistakable now. He was coughing up flower petals.

❀

It was night, the clouds dark and the moon half-full and bright. Jackson stepped into the bus, avoided eye contact with the driver and headed for a seat at the very back. The bus was almost empty, only two other passengers near the front. He was tired and slumped further into the seat, ignoring the way his suit crumpled against the small of his back. He wondered if Mark had noticed he didn’t show up at the store today. Work had become busier now that his time to move was nearing, and he hadn’t finished up for the day until the sun had set, well past the florist’s opening hours.

Suddenly, too suddenly, the itch settled in his throat. Fluttery and dry, Jackson glanced around quickly in search of an escape, but to no avail. He covered his mouth with both hands as the coughing started, wincing as the soft thuds of petals hit his palms. There were lots of them, too many of them, and his coughing grew into an urge to heave, his chest beginning to get tight. He pushed it down and made eye contact with an old lady at the front of the bus who was clearly getting irritated with the amount of noise he was making. Jackson ducked his head below the seat in front of him and let a couple of the petals fall to the ground. They were accumulating, and he couldn’t hold on to all of them.

When it died down, he straightened up, looking outside the windows to get his bearings and to stop his head from spinning so much. He felt weak and his face in the dark reflection was pale. When the bus finally reached his stop and he stepped out into the cold icy air, Jackson had left behind a small pile of yellow petals on the bus seat, a few beginning to flutter down and join the others that littered the floor around it.

❀

“Oh, look Jackson! Foxgloves!”

They were walking Mark’s dog in the park, the early spring wind chilling their fingers and numbing their noses. Mark was pointing at the bushes further up the path, multitudes of thin green stems covered in little bells, some brilliantly pink, others white with rich purple centres.

Mark ran ahead, racing with the little white dog, lead in hand, and Jackson couldn’t help but laugh. His hair bounced with every step he took, and the cuffs of his too-large sweater drooped over his hands. He stopped before the foxgloves and when he turned to look at him, Jackson could see the happiness infusing every inch of his face. It made Jackson’s heart flutter.

It also made his chest ache. A slight pain was forming on the lefthand side, not enough to be that noticeable, but each time Mark smiled and the skin around his eyes crinkled it hurt just that little bit more.

“Jackson, hurry up!”

He pushed back at the scratchy feeling crawling up the back of his throat, and by the time he reached Mark it had nearly gone.

“They’re lovely,” Jackson said, attempting to focus his attention on the flowers in front of him instead of the steadily growing ache or the way Mark’s arm was brushing against his own.

“Aren’t they?” Mark sighed. “Some of them grow to be six feet tall, you know.”

“Really?” Jackson kept looking at the soft pink of Mark’s lips, aching to touch them, aching to kiss them, the ache in his chest was getting really painful now and a wave of nausea flooded over him. Mark was explaining something about foxgloves that Jackson didn’t hear. The pinks and purples were spotting in his vision, blurring with the endless, endless green, and the sickly sweet scents were making his head spin. His stomach churned and his palms were getting sweaty. There were petals lodged in his throat, he could feel them, feel them blocking his airway and scratching his insides. He swallowed hard, achieving nothing but another surge of nausea and an intake of breath so quick it stung his nose on the way in.

Mark was looking at him and—shit, what had he been saying?—Jackson forced his eyes to focus on Mark standing in front of him, avoiding eye contact for fear he would start expelling petals on the spot.

“That’s so,” Jackson was choking on the petals, his voice muffled and husky in his ears, “cool.”

Mark looked at him a little oddly, but Jackson was saved anymore suspicion by the little dog sniffing his nose in the foxglove bush.

“Hey, Milo—no, bad dog.” Mark scolded. “That’s a poisonous plant, you can’t eat that.”

Pulling on the lead, Mark led Milo away from the bushes, giving Jackson enough time to swallow the waxy yellow flowers and bile. He was short of breath when he caught up, but Mark just told him needed to get fitter with a teasing laugh.

Later that evening, when he finally made it home, Jackson knelt by the toilet and gripped it tightly with shaking hands. There was a trail of yellow where he didn’t make it in time and there was still more coming up, spilling from his mouth as he retched and gagged on the fluttering, searing pain in his throat. He imagined the petals were slicing his trachea open, spilling his blood onto the cold white tiles of his bathroom, pouring into his chest and dripping from his ribcage. Jackson opened his eyes and looked at the pile of yellow petals floating in the bowl. There were different ones this time, bell-shaped—like the foxgloves—but not quite. They were crinkled along the opening edge and still as yellow as the others, if not more orange. Blood speckled the top layer, the crimson a stark contrast against the soft honey-coloured petals. Jackson brushed the few had got caught on the toilet seat into the bowl with the back of his hand and flushed them down without looking again.

❀

Jackson was seriously starting to wonder if he should tell someone. He was throwing up flowers nearly every day now, which luckily, he kept down until the evening when he returned home, alone and hunched over his toilet, sprinkling it with yellow and red. But it was getting harder and harder to fight through the entire day, and it was only a matter of time before his weird condition no longer remained a secret.

And finally, that day came. It was a bright sunny Tuesday morning, and he and Jinyoung were walking back from their favourite coffee shop. Jinyoung worked with him in the office, and he was the first friend Jackson had made when he first arrived in the country. They were walking along the main road, past pedestrian crossing lights that tutted with mismatched marches conducted by its inhabitants, when they passed a white, sterile storefront selling expensive fragrances. The sharp scent of fake flowers stabbed at his nose and Jackson stumbled, spilling his coffee on the battered grey concrete. He was blinded, with artificial roses pouring like syrup down his throat, filling his lungs and pooling in his head, and there was a searing pain splitting his chest right down the middle. Someone had grabbed his arm and somewhere underneath the muffled barrier that had drowned out his hearing, Jinyoung’s voice was reverberating around in Jackson’s skull. He couldn’t feel where his feet were, couldn’t tell whether they were moving. All he could feel was the pain in his chest, like something had buried its way into his ribcage and was winding itself around and around his bone, pulling each rib closer and closer together and sewing his chest shut. He could not look away from the yellow petals on the ground, blown about by the steps of passers-by and a gentle wind. Every time they blew out of his peripheral, more replaced them. It felt endless.

The feeling returned to his body before Jackson had realised that he was no longer throwing up petals. Jinyoung had pulled him off the main street and into what he could barely call an alley. It was no longer than a couple metres deep, ending in a stained grey wall that matched the shops on either side of it. Probably a result of poor architectural planning. Jackson leaned against the wall. Every inhale sent a spike of pain through his chest, so he kept his breaths shallow and quick. Jinyoung was looking at him with wide eyes, his hand still resting on his arm to support him.

“Are you okay?” Jinyoung broke the silence between them.

Jackson nodded slowly. It made a dull pain throb in his head.

A few moments passed before Jinyoung spoke again: “What… what _was_ that?”

“I don’t know,” Jackson wiped at a dribble in the corner of his mouth. His sleeve came back glistening red. He explained all that had happened to him and by the time he had finished, Jinyoung’s face had regained the colour it had lost, but he didn’t look any less worried.

“You need to see a doctor,” he said.

“How can I?” Jackson said. “It’s absolutely mad. None of them would believe me.”

“You have to try. You’re throwing up blood and you’re in pain. _That’s_ medically recognised. You have to try.”

❀

The clinic’s waiting room was quiet. There were only a few other patients, all older than Jackson was, waiting just as he was. A woman behind the desk tapped on her keyboard softly, looking up now and then. A clock ticked on a wall somewhere. It was the middle of the day, and the hours had been drawn out of their eager sprints, spread out in the musty air of the room to take up as much space as they wanted. Jackson let his eyes waver out of focus, basking in the slowness of the one o’clock afternoon.

A man came around a corner and stood by the desk.

“Jackson Wang,” he called.

Jackson stood up, making his presence known, and followed the doctor past the desk, back around the corner and down a narrow hallway. The door was a grey green with a plaque that shone a dull silver and inscribed in it was the doctor’s name: Dr. Kim Yugyeom.

Inside the doctor’s office, Jackson took the patient’s seat, its fabric a deep green with flecks of grey. He waited patiently as Dr. Kim typed on his computer, asking him occasional questions about his personal details.

When he finished, he looked directly into Jackson’s eyes and spoke: “We have the results of your X-ray from Wednesday.”

Jackson nodded. He’d taken Jinyoung’s advice about a month earlier and had made an appointment with the doctor before him. He hadn’t mentioned the flower petals but had described every other symptom he’d had and that had led to a straight referral to a radiologist, no questions asked. He’d been told to make a second appointment with his doctor so the results could be analysed further. Jackson wasn’t sure what to expect.

“There was nothing abnormal about your results,” Dr. Kim said.

Jackson felt an immediate sense of relief but was quickly overtaken by another. One that felt off. It couldn’t be. He knew there was something wrong with him. Flowers don’t just emerge from the human body this way.

“I’m sorry,” Jackson interrupted Dr. Kim who was in the middle of advising him on temporary treatments for his coughs. “There was one other thing.”

“Yes?” Dr. Kim said.

“I, I know this will sound… unbelievably strange. But, well, I’ve been coughing up flower petals too.”

Dr. Kim looked at him silently. Jackson saw his brow furrow just the tiniest bit. After a pause, however, he gave a good-natured laugh. “Oh Jackson, you have one sense of humour.”

Jackson laughed along, a stone dropping in his stomach. He thanked the doctor and politely left. He had made it halfway down the hallway before he heard the door opening again.

“Mr Wang?”

Jackson turned around. Dr. Kim was beckoning him back into the room as if on second thought. Confused, Jackson followed him and took up his spot in the seat once more. Dr. Kim closed the door firmly behind him.

“Truthfully, we did find _something_ in your results.”

Jackson sat up straighter.

“What you must understand,” Dr. Kim continued, “is that this is very strange, very rare and has minimal scientific basis.”

Dr. Kim clicked at his computer a few times and spun the monitor around. Jackson looked at what was undoubtably, an X-ray of his chest. He could see the thick white line that was his spine and a few fainter lines that were his ribs. But on either side of his spinal cord were lots of little cloud-shaped patches, clearer where closer to the centre of his chest and greater in number on his left side.

“This is the X-ray of your chest,” Dr. Kim said. “Your bone shows up white because they are dense enough to block radiation. Your lungs should show up black since they contain mostly air and allow the radiation to pass through. Evidently, this is not the case.” He tapped the fluffy white clouds with the back of his pen. “I believe your coughing up petals is not a trick of your imagination, these are flowers and they are residing in your lungs.”

A moment passed before Jackson could speak. “How is that possible?” he asked finally.

“There is one theory, you must remember that it’s not well proven and there’s barely any research on it. Most consider it an old folktale if they consider it at all.

“It’s called the Hanahaki disease. When a person falls victim to an unrequited love, a flowering plant grows in the lungs and patients begin to cough up the petals. Obstructions in the lungs are nearly always fatal and there’s only two ways to prevent this from occurring. The first, the love is requited. The second is surgery, which is an experimental and very risky procedure. However, if successful, surgery is theorised to remove all emotional attachments as well as the flowers in order to prevent regrowth.”

Jackson sat in silence, mulling it all over. He felt like someone had stuffed his head with cotton. As if from a distance, he watched himself thank the doctor and agree to call with his decision regarding surgery. He left the building in a trance, barely aware of where his feet were taking him.

Mark.

It was always Mark. He had known that from the beginning. He had felt it every time Mark had smiled at him, every time he had laughed with him, every time he had touched him, hugged him, cried on him, in the past year and a half. He had felt it when he saw Mark in the depths of the flower shop—and _god_ does that coincidence just feel cruel now—walking amongst the coloured bells and blossoms on their stalks. Jackson thought about his dirt-stained jeans with flowers sticking out of their pockets, his narrow but strong shoulders constrained by denim straps, his soft brown hair that drifted its way over his prominent cheekbones. Jackson thought about Mark— _Mark,_ and he braced his hands against the trunk of a tree just by the carpark and there were honey golden petals littering the floor. He was seeing Mark’s face in the midst of them, gorgeous and smiling, and he was seeing himself, shivering by a tree, saliva pooling in the base of his mouth and mixing with his own blood and coating the little ovals in the grass. And he knew, he had known all along, there was no way he could undergo the surgery. It had been Mark, it had always been Mark, and Jackson knew he would have to see it out to the end.

❀

He didn’t make another appointment. When the phone rang, he hung up almost immediately. He stopped going to work after a couple of weeks, called in sick and promised he’d do the necessary paperwork from home. He didn’t. He paced around the apartment, spent time cleaning and reading and cooking instead. He didn’t see anyone but Jinyoung, who visited every few days to check up on him and keep him up to date on the events of the office and anything else worth some interest. He had promised not to tell anyone about the flowers, about the _disease_ , but that didn’t stop him from asking Jackson to consider the surgery every time he visited.

And yet, Jackson remained adamant. He was throwing up flowers and bile two to three times a day now, each heave accompanied by piercing pains that rendered him breathless for hours afterward. He could almost _feel_ the stalks accumulating in his lungs, feel the roots digging deeper and deeper into his chest, searching for a substantial hold on to his tissue. He spent multiple times a day sitting on his cold bathroom tiles, gasping for breath, digging his fingers further down his throat to dislodge the petals from his airway, which only made him throw up more. And yet, he refused to give it up.

One late afternoon in the middle of the week, there was a knock on his door. He had been sitting on the edge of his bed, staring out the window at the city below, thinking about nothing in particular. Jackson got up at the sound and opened his door to find Mark standing before him. From the first glance, Jackson felt the flowers jump up into his mouth, threatening to push past his lips with their rubbery yellow bodies.

“Jackson!” Mark smiled at him, releasing his name with a relieved sigh.

Jackson swallowed forcefully, shoving the petals down his throat.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” Mark said. “You haven’t shown up at the shop for a week now, so I asked Jinyoung and he said you’d fallen ill. I’ve brought some food, thought it might help cheer you up.” Mark held up two bags, each bulked differently with its contents. Jackson let him in, and Mark immediately took over the kitchen, pulling out food wrapped in plastic, vegetables, noodles, bowls. “I wasn’t sure what you had, so I kind of brought everything.”

Jackson was instructed to stay in the living space, on the couch specifically, because he was sick. He didn’t have any complaints about that and by the time Mark came to join him, two bowls of soup in his hands, Jackson had settled into its cushions nicely, watching the setting sun over the city street outside his window.

“You know,” Mark said later, placing his empty bowl on the table. “I met someone. I think you’d really like him. When you get better you can meet him, we’ll all go out together somewhere. It’ll be fun.”

Jackson could only nod and keep eating. His voice seemed to have stopped working. Mark looked so happy.

“Oh hey, daffodil petals.” Mark was filling the empty silence by inspecting the yellow ovals strewn at the table’s foot. Jackson winced. He must have missed a spot when he was cleaning up the morning’s episode.

“They were—uh, from Jinyoung.” Jackson lied, forcing his voice back into existence. “Sort of a get-well-soon sentiment. Had to throw them out this morning, though. They were starting to wilt.”

Mark hummed, feeling the petals between his forefinger and thumb. “They’re my favourite flower, daffodils,” he said, oblivious to meaning this statement held for Jackson.

Jackson threw up a whole flower that evening. He had to grab the head and pull the stalk out of his throat. It came out coated in his saliva, red and slippery with his blood. He left it on the sink’s edge and turned out the light.

❀

Weeks passed and Jackson only grew weaker. He was in a constant state of breathlessness, moving from one end of the apartment to the other tired him and often he would sit down on the floor to take a break and would find himself unable to get back up for several minutes. His face was getting thinner— _he_ was getting thinner—and paler, and he had resorted to eating foods that came out of packets to save the energy it would require otherwise. He never slept a full night anymore; he was always jolted from slumber in the early hours of the morning, covered in sweat and wracked with nausea. A few more weeks passed until one day, Jackson woke up in bed and couldn’t find the energy to get out of it.

“Jackson,” Jinyoung’s voice was laced with concern one sunny morning, where he sat at the foot of Jackson’s bed. Yellow petals littered the carpet and the blankets. Both of them had given up on disposing of them. There were simply too many.

“Jinyoung.” Jackson’s voice was scratchy and dipped in and out of sound, like water lapping at a shore’s edge.

“Please. I know I ask every time, and I know what you say every time, but I’m serious this time. Get the surgery. You’re practically wasting away.”

Jackson shifted against his pillows with a groan. “You know what they said Jinyoung, it’s risky and most of the doctors don’t even think it’s real.”

“But even a chance at survival is better than knowing for certain that you won’t…” Jinyoung trailed off.

“I know,” Jackson said, his voice little. “But I would rather die loving him than forget just how much I did.”

Jinyoung gave him a small smile and let the topic drop. He seemed to realise there was nothing he could do.

“Mark keeps asking to see you,” he said. “He’s practically wringing himself with worry. Maybe we should let him. It could help you.”

“It won’t. I don’t want to see him.”

What Jackson wanted to say was that he didn’t want to see Mark suffering because of him. He didn’t want to see the face he loved contorted in such pain because of him. He wanted to remember Mark as the radiant person he had known him to be, the one who had made the last year and a half of his life worth more than the entire twenty-five that had come before it.

❀

Love was a funny thing.

It was supposed to be pretty, tender, sweet. Like honey and sunrises and golden fields of daffodils that run for miles and miles, finding comfort in knowing that they covered an expanse so large it would take days to trek it.

But it wasn’t. Not always. Not the way it should’ve been.

Maybe it was supposed to be vibrant, passionate and thrilling then. Like riding a motorbike through a neon city, screaming in delight, throwing yourself into the noise and the light and the wind and the movement of a world created to grow into so much more.

But it wasn’t that either. Not completely.

Maybe in some ways it was. Love wasn’t _not_ those things. But there was always more digging deeper than the sun could reach. Love was more than just the sweet smelling petals; it was all the parts that were buried in the coarse dirt as well.

Love was charming and enticing and all-consuming. Love wormed its way through hearts, minds, bodies—and rooted itself there. We said we were “in love” but maybe love was in _us_. We would give ourselves up to the growing, mutating, pulsing organism that was love because we were in too deep; we were drawn to the smell, the colours, the beautiful nature of it all, and found ourselves tangled in the stalks by the end.

Maybe we _were_ love, in a convoluted way. But how could we be the flower if even the flower was not itself? A flower was made up of all the elements around it: the minerals in the soil, the sunlight, the water we gave it, the air. Maybe we were the flower after all, but in doing so, we were the terrible products of those cultivations far beyond us.

And so, it seemed, the greatest feat of love was surrendering all control.

❀

Jinyoung stood in the apartment. It looked the same. The curtains opened into the rooms, the sunlight illuminated the floorboards, all the shelves and cupboards and décor stood where they always had, hardly a speck of dust on any of them. The only real difference, Jinyoung thought as he walked into the bedroom, was _that_. The bed was now empty.

Petals and flowers still covered the floor. All of them pristine and perfect except for the blood that covered them. The bedsheets still held the remnants of a body, rustled and creased around the middle, a single corner pulled back. They would clear the space out soon. Jinyoung would have to come back to go through Jackson’s things tomorrow. Figure out what to send back to his family and what to dispose of entirely.

But today didn’t concern any of that. Today concerned picking up Mark and his new boyfriend and driving to the funeral. The three of them exchanged small talk on the way in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere—Mark and his boyfriend, Jaebeom, told many interesting stories about their pets—but the air still hung heavy and immoveable over their heads.

The sea of black was suffocating. Jackson had known many people, and plenty had flown in from other countries at the news. It occurred to Jinyoung that, whilst he and Jackson had been really close, he might not have even come _near_ to being one of the central people in Jackson’s life. There were so many people Jinyoung didn’t recognise. He clung tight to Mark and his boyfriend as they made their way through the crowd.

The casket was closed. Jinyoung knew why. Beneath the heavy wooden lid, Jackson’s chest was split open down the middle, a beautiful thicket of daffodils pouring from his ribcage, organs overrun by brilliant greens and yellows that lived even when he was not. Jinyoung knew because that was what Jackson had asked for.

“Why does it have to be a closed casket?” Mark whispered partway through the service, his voice thick, tears glistening the corners of his eyes.

“It’s a sign of respect for some,” Jaebeom whispered back to him. Jinyoung looked ahead and pretended not to hear. “Maybe his family didn’t want so many people looking at him during death.”

“I just wish I could see him one more time,” Mark said. “It all ended so suddenly. It was too cruel.”

Jaebeom wrapped an arm around his shoulders, “I know, love.”

Jinyoung smiled sadly. Mark was his friend too and Jaebeom seemed lovely so far, but Jinyoung couldn’t help but feel detached from them in that moment. Maybe he’d feel detached from anyone Jackson had ever known for the rest of his life. He was the only one who knew the real reason behind Jackson’s death, after all. _Don’t tell anyone, even after I’m gone,_ Jackson had said to him. _Please promise me that._

And so Jinyoung watched, clothed in his black attire in the middle of that windy spring day, as they buried the casket and a few of Jackson’s closest relatives knelt down by the fresh mound of earth. Taking a small plastic pot each, they dug through the soil to make space for the many little flowers. No one had understood Jackson’s last wish, but they honoured it anyway and finally, after nearly half an hour, the grave, under the cold cloud-speckled sky, was covered with hundreds of gleaming yellow daffodils.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Long time, no post. Just a little something I’ve been working on since my finals ended. Constructive criticism is really really encouraged (but please be nice haha). Please let me know how this piece made you feel, what you liked and disliked about it, the bits that feel clunky and if the ending is satisfying or not. As well as anything else that comes to mind! I’d really really appreciate it!
> 
> Thank you, and I hope you’re all staying safe and well ♡


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